


<3 Maruko wa Shujinkou!! <3

by NovelistAngel23



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Middle School, Growing Up, M/M, Marco's a weeb, Punk Jean Kirstein, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 18:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5173967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovelistAngel23/pseuds/NovelistAngel23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco Bodt’s life is not a shoujo manga.</p><p>Sometimes he thinks it's because he's a tall gay middle school aged boy and not a pretty, petite, high school girl. Fate (AKA genetics) is a cruel mistress.</p><p>It's completely unfair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	<3 Maruko wa Shujinkou!! <3

Marco Bodt’s life is not a shoujo manga.

In another world, maybe, an ideal one, it would be. Sometimes, he wonders how it's not.

He's got all the traits for it! He's plucky and has good friends (some of them are walking anime tropes themselves!). His mom is majorly outgoing; he's not particularly skilled at anything--even if he were, his three older sisters (who got him into this whole anime thing in the first place) would surely surpass him.

Sometimes he thinks it's because he's a tall gay middle school aged boy and not a pretty, petite, high school girl. Fate (AKA genetics) is a cruel mistress.

It's completely unfair. He even has the perfect love interest. His name is Jean Kirschtein.

In the manga Marco reads, there's always that one love interest. Sometimes he's the main one and other times he's just the miscellaneous corner of a love triangle, but he's always there, and Marco always roots for him.

The jerk with the heart of gold, the one that steals Marco’s heart the moment he shows up on screen. The only otome game he owns, a hand me down from his oldest sister, Ilse, had one named Isaac, and Marco couldn't bring himself to play again and romance anyone else.

It's completely unfair that he's not the protagonist of some terribly clichéd shoujo manga because all he wants are shoujo sparkles and cherry blossom petals floating between he and Jean like some bittersweet symbolism for true love. Sometimes Marco thinks how much easier his life would be if he just had dialogue options, or if a romantic at heart were writing his story as it unfolds.

 

The longing for a simple romance sticks with him all throughout middle school. In sixth grade he joins the anime club--and promptly drops it when he realizes it's full of gross older boys that only want to talk about hentai and ecchi. He still doesn't understand boob physics in some anime.

But sixth grade is also the year he meets Jean Kirschtein and the first time he romances Isaac in that hand me down otome. There is no meet cute--he doesn't bump into Jean and drop all his books. He doesn't argue with him from the moment they meet because he's a total jerk. They meet through a friend, Sasha Braus, and even though Jean's a bit crass at times, Marco genuinely enjoys talking to him.

 

In seventh grade, all the older boys have graduated and Marco offers to take over anime club. Hentai is promptly banned. They lose three guys but gain four girls. One day, Sasha bumps into a boy one day as they're leaving their meeting room, and he drops all of his books. His name is Connie, he tells her, and Naruto is his favorite manga ever. They hit it off, and Marco sees it all, happy for her but disappointed as well. She's pretty and petite and plucky and fun, and he's not surprised it was her and not him.

That year at a Valentine's day dance, Marco doesn't ask anyone to be his date (he's way, way too shy to ask Jean). So he sits and watches his friends dance, wondering if someone will ask him to slow dance with them. He's dressed up so nice, but it's nearly the end of the dance by the time Jean comes up to him. His tie isn't on straight, and Marco resists the urge to adjust it.

“Why're you sitting here all alone?”

Marco is too embarrassed to tell the truth, so he lies and says he just doesn't want to dance. Jean nods solemnly and then sits beside him. “Wanna sneak some cupcakes and get out of here?” Marco eagerly agrees.

They spend the rest of the night until their parents come to pick them up hidden in the shade of a big tree in the middle of the courtyard. Jean talks about his disastrous date with the beautiful Mikasa. Turns out thinking someone is pretty and being compatible with them are two different things entirely. Marco thinks about it all night.

 

It's eighth grade that Reality finally Ensues. His mom gets remarried that year, and Marco's step brother Eren is everything a shounen anime protagonist should be. He's loud and reckless and all about justice (his mother is dead too, but Marco thinks it's distasteful to mention to his anime club friends the day after Eren moves in). Where Marco is an eighth grader who longs for romance, Eren is a tenth grader that calls himself a social justice warrior. In an ideal world, they’d be the heroes of a story.

But just like himself, Eren is also bound by the chains of reality.

Eren isn’t the only new reality to hit him. That year, a lot of things change. Sasha moves away, but it's not a huge story arc, and there aren't any character developments and there isn't a resolution.

Jean moves on from anime (he only ever watched for Marco) and instead of mourning Maes Hughes, he begins to mourn the break up of My Chemical Romance. He tells Marco that he's punk now, and for the first time in a long time, Marco thinks about Isaac from that otome game. Jean doesn't look anything like him anymore, but Marco's feelings for him don't change.

Reality Ensues when Marco starts to think about college for the first time. What does he want to be when he grows up? He contemplates art, but all he's good at drawing is anime. He decides one day, after listening to one of Eren's social justice rants, that he wants to be a police officer. A good one, that puts away bad guys.

Sounds like an anime protagonist, he thinks. But it's not the anime he hoped for two years ago.

There's one last glimmer of hope, at the end of 8th grade. It happens so suddenly that he doesn't realize it's happening. One minute he's turned towards Jean, laughing at a joke he made, and next thing he knows, he’s suspended in midair, having tripped over his shoelaces.

Everything moves in slow motion for a minute, frame by frame--panel by panel--where for a split second he sees the very bottom of a stairwell reaching out for him, and then there’s an arm wrapped around his waist and he’s wrenched from the brink of death and against Jean’s chest. They stay there for a moment that feels like three years--Marco compares it to that one page in a manga that’s just so beautiful that he has to spend a few minutes just studying it.

Their eyes meet, and Marco’s breath catches in his throat. Jean’s eyes are gold, and he wears way too much eyeliner and his hair's a mess--the fringe is dyed red. But they’re soft when they look at Marco, studying him to make sure he’s okay.

Marco finds that his hands are on Jean’s chest, and he can feel his heart pound beneath his fingertips. For a moment, Marco expects the bubblegum pop of a shoujo anime theme song to start playing in the background, for cherry blossom petals to flutter between them, for the lighting to hit their faces just right--for Jean to close the scant distance between them and kiss him.

And then Jean says, “Holy shit!”

And the moment is gone.

“Holy shit, Marco, you almost DIED, I just saved your LIFE!”

Reality Ensues.

But Marco finds himself laughing, not disappointed in the least as Jean sets him right and continues to scream and shout about saving his precious life. He ducks to tie Marco’s shoe for him, and they both laugh until they can’t breathe.

It’s that day, that moment, that Marco realizes his life is not a shoujo manga. And he’ll never be the anime protagonist. And even if, someday, his crush on Jean is reciprocated, it won’t happen like in an otome game. It’s that day, that moment, that Marco realizes he likes his life just the way it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh gooooddddd I hope I didn't fuck up the Japanese in the title, it's supposed to mean Marco the Protagonist or something along those lines (please, feel free to correct me, you probably know better than I do lol).
> 
> Anyway! I have a lot of feelings about this one, it reminds me of my own middle school weeb days. Like, please imagine weeaboo Marco throwing up little peace signs in pictures and saying random Japanese phrases and being head of the anime club and playing otome games and having dreams where Jean is a totally sexy bishie that sweeps him off his feet. Braces are optional, but I think they'd be purple.
> 
> So, if you liked this (whatever this thing I wrote on a whim is) please, kudos and comment and check out my writing sideblog, novelistangel! Thanks for reading!! =DDD


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